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Carl Booth hopes to stake a claim among the top Brave fighters with a win in his return bout. Set to come back from a 13-month layoff, the englishman takes on Dino Bagattin at Brave 19, Sun City, South Africa this weekend.

The Nottingham-based welterweight hopes a win over Bagattin will be enough to land him a top spot in a Brave event in 2019 and dreams of headlining a show in his native England.

“I believe I will be headlining a show for Brave next year after I smash my way through the division, starting with Dino. Hopefully, I can fight in a packed arena in front of my fans in England. Our fans are the best and I want to make sure they experience a Brave card sometime soon. Northern Ireland and Ireland also have a lot of great fighters, and that’s why Brave went to Belfast”, ponders Booth.

“I’ve added loads of new weapons in my time away. I’ve had some injuries, but I’ve had time to train and improve and I think this new version of myself is going to be too much for him to handle. My style is too much for him, but I do expect him to come in strong and give me a good fight”, says “The Bomber”.

Brave 19 will be headlined by a welterweight clash between promotional newcomers Adam Townsend and Mark Hulme this weekend.

Also on tap for the promotion’s first trip to South Africa, is a bantamweight duel between contenders Frans Mlambo and Arnold Quero and the return of Pawel Kielek, who meets David Bear in a welterweight fight with possible title implications.

Since The Last Stylebender’s last win over Derek Brunson earlier this month, we’ve all been wondering who’s next for him. Will it be Jacare? Will it be for the title after Whittaker (21-4) and Gastelum (16-3) 1 NC go at it? Will he be an alternate for that fight?

We’ve got our answer, it turns out he’ll fight the best Middleweight and arguably the best mixed martial artist of all time, Anderson “The Spider” Silva at UFC 234, the same event as Robert Whittaker vs Kelvin Gastelum. So it looks like perhaps we’ll know the
Champion and Challenger at the end of UFC 234.

We’ll start off with Anderson, he came up through the ranks in PRIDE and a couple other promotions before we got to see him in the UFC; he got to win and lose there so by the time he got the UFC, he was virtually unstoppable. Sometimes people discredit him because the middleweight division when he was champ isn’t what it is now, and it wasn’t, but his performances in those fights were incredible, and he did still fight a lot of high-level guys.

He could’ve easily been the first concurrent two-weight world champ in the UFC, he went up to 205 and won all three fights by first-round knockouts, one over the former champ Forrest Griffin, who just lost his belt in the fight prior. One fight later is the reason he isn’t the first concurrent champ-champ. He was a very impressive specimen before joining the UFC, then his UFC career deemed him an unforgettable legend. He first dismantled the iron-chin Chris Leben, who was 15-1, 5-0 in the UFC, landing 18 of 20 total strikes and getting the KO 49 seconds into the fight.

He then fought the legend, then middleweight Champion Rich Franklin, who was 22-1, and his only loss was to Lyoto Machida. He ran through him, submitted highly respected BJJ black belt Travis Lutter, knocked out Nate Marquardt, rematched, and again knocked out Rich Franklin; then between jumping to 205 and defending his belt at 185, he picked up wins over Dan Henderson (22-6), unifying the UFC and PRIDE Middleweight Championships, Patrick Cote (14-4), KOing vicious Light-Heavyweight knockout artist James Irvin (14-1) in one minute, Thales Leites (14-1), Forrest Griffin (16-5), Demian Maia (12-1), Chael Sonnen x2 (26-10-1, 28-11-1), Vitor Belfort (19-8) on a five fight win streak, three fight KO streak, Yushin Okami (27-5), and a juiced up Stephan Bonnar (19-7), who’d only lost to current or former world champions, and never been finished other than his TKO loss via cut to Krysztof Soszynski. Since then, he was caught clowning Chris Weidman (9-0) when he was winning the fight, and just hasn’t been the same since. He’s gone 1-4 with one no contest, which was a win over Nick Diaz. He won a controversial decision against Derek Brunson (16-4), but also lost a controversial decision to Michael Bisping (28-7), and arguably won that fight via KO at 4:59 of round 3. In his run, he won the Shooto Welterweight Championship, he won the Cage Rage Middleweight Championship and defended it three times, then won the UFC belt in his second UFC fight and defended it 11 times. He has the most finishes in Middleweight history at 11, and the most finishes in UFC title fights at 9, most knockdowns in UFC history at 17, and most knockdowns in UFC title fights at 10, along with the most wins in UFC Middleweight history at 14. Israel Adasanya started out fighting in Kickboxing/Muay Thai, he went 32-0 as an amateur before turning professional. He had a stellar pro record of 75-5-1, and has the most King In The Ring titles at 3, he’s also 6-1 in pro boxing. In a little over a year of professional mma, he assumed a 2-0 record, before going 9-0 in the next two years; becoming the AFC Middleweight Champion, and Hex Fighting Series Middleweight Champion in back-to-back fights before making his UFC debut. He gets taken down a few times by Rob Wilkinson (11-1) but TKOs him in round two, then picks up decision wins over Marvin Vettori (12-3-1) and Brad Tavares (17-5), with both his striking and his wrestling defense looking better in each fight. His next fight with Brunson, he looked unstoppable. A 3x Division II All-American didn’t have the slightest hope of taking him down, he looked way too slow, and Israel made him look like an amateur, knocking him out in round one. He is 15-0 with 13 knockouts and 2 decisions, Anderson is 34-8-0-1 with 22 knockouts, 4 submissions, and 8 decisions. Israel has earned his BJJ blue belt recently, while Anderson is a 3rd degree black belt, along with a 5th degree black belt in Taekwondo, and a black belt in Muay Thai. I think it’s fair to say that Israel is absolutely a black belt level striker too though. Israel is two inches taller at 6′ 4”, and has a 2.5 inch reach advantage. He’s also obviously much younger, about 14 years younger in fact. I’m very excited for this match up and cannot wait for this!

Maycee “The Future” Barber is fighting for the first time in the UFC this Saturday at UFC Denver and we should all be excited! She is one of the new waves of next-gen fighters who are elite everywhere and have trained every discipline of martial arts since they had the ability to walk. Barber has one goal, to become the youngest ever UFC champion, and at the age of 20 she has the time to do it, but it needs to be quick to beat Jon Jones’ current record.

The UFC delivers with a spectacular card of fights at the most grand stadium in New York City. Spearheading the evening is a heavyweight fight to determine the baddest man on the planet: Two- Division Champion Daniel Cormier battles Houston’s Black Beast, Derrick Lewis. A match for the history books that will reward either DC’s first title defense in the top division, or Lewis’s dominant run through the ranks, with the championship belt.

The results will be updated below, and live play by play action will be courtesy of @TheDantyMan over on the @MMA_Motion Twitter account.

Bellator strikes again this Sunday in a second World Heavyweight Grand Prix Semi-Final match-up. It’s USA vs. Russia when Chael “The American Gangster” Sonnen takes on the legend Fedor “The Last Emperor” Emelianenko. The winner of this match faces Ryan Bader in the Grand Prix Finals for the Bellator Heavyweight Championship of the world.

The results will be updated below, and live play by play action will be courtesy of @TheDantyMan over on the @MMA_Motion Twitter account.

The main card kicks off @ 9:00PM ET/6:00PM PT on the Paramount Network & DAZN and the Prelim card is DAZN exclusive @ 6:30EST/3:30PST.

In UFC’s first live event in Russia, it brings to Moscow fans a heavyweight bout fitting for a debut. Mark Hunt, known for his walk-away knockouts, and Aleksei Oleinik for his spectacular grappling and back-to-back Ezekiel choke finishes, do battle in the main event.

In the co-main event, a light-heavyweight battle betwqeen the #4 ranked fighter in the world Jan Blachowicz steps in the octagon against Ukraine’s own Nikita Krylov.

The results will be updated below, and live play by play action will be courtesy of @TheDantyMan over on the @MMA_Motion Twitter account.

I think all MMA fans have a similar idea of the strengths both lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor posses and each fighters key to victory is quite clear, Khabib has the advantage on the floor and wrestling and “The Notorious” has an advantage in the striking department.

Kevin Lee has had his say on the upcoming encounter: “I think Conor’s probably going to sleep him,” Lee said on MMAjunkie Radio. “I’m just looking at the matchup and how the styles is, and especially with someone like Khabib. Khabib’s just got the same holes that I’ve been seeing for years and years and years. And I know Conor’s been seeing them, too. So, when you see those holes, and they’re not getting at least a little closed, then he’s going to get slept.”

Lee pointed out that he sees holes in the Russians game which appeared when the champion fought Al Iaquinta at UFC 223. Despite a very dominant performance, the mauling Russian was met with significate criticism with regards to his striking arsenal and how a stand-up fighter could pose significant damage to the champion.

“Khabib misses a lot of shots, too,” said Lee. “(If) you look at his film, his actual stand-up wrestling and transition game is trash.”

Will Nurmagomedov’s weaknesses be used against a striker like McGregor? That is the biggest question right now. Lee doesn’t hesitate to describe what will happen if the champ is successful in taking down McGregor.

“I don’t see him finishing him. He’s going to beat the hell out of him, and he might break Conor’s spirit, because Conor can be broken, but I think Conor might be already kind of expecting that. And when something like that happens and you expect it, I don’t think it breaks you as easily.”

Lee did, however point out how McGregor has not been too serious in MMA recently and training boxing and having holidays but nobody knows what happens behind closed doors.

“There are some x-factors in there, with Conor having just trained for a boxing match and that being his focus for a long time,” Lee said. “That’s a different type of pressure than when someone’s really trying to take you down. You can’t just swing at his head. You can’t just swing all out. But, I don’t know, I still think Conor’s going to catch him at one point.”

We are not far away from getting the answers to the questions every MMA fan in the world has and the biggest fight in UFC lightweight history will in fact finally go down!